It is a well-known Egyptian proverb: Once you drink from the Nile, you are destined to return. I had the privilege of serving as an Israeli diplomat in Cairo, Egypt, on two diplomatic tours. On my first tour, I came to see Cairo as my second home; that was one of the reasons I chose…
Amid the blaze of graffiti in and around Cairo’s Tahrir Square — from hastily scribbled political slogans to elaborate portraits of the many martyrs of Egypt’s unfinished revolution — is an arresting image that encapsulates some of the rage engulfing the country right now. It shows the easily recognizable face of Mohamed Morsi, the embattled…
It’s 2 a.m. Wednesday morning and nearly everybody here in Cairo, if they are still awake, wonders how it will all go down. As Egypt’s ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak lies dead or dying, official results of the final round of voting for president will not be announced by the Electoral Commission until Thursday at the…
The Arab Spring presents a conundrum for many liberal Jews. As liberals they feel compelled to advocate self-determination over tyranny and democracy over dictatorship. But as Jews they worry that the Arab dictators, particularly Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, held down the lid on a seething Pandora’s Box of popular anti-Semitism. On the contrary, though, I would…
Shortly before the recent outbreak of violence in Tahrir Square, a friend fantasized about what he would do if he had a time machine with two buttons, one labeled “Back to Mubarak,” the other labeled “Stay the course.” This decent, eminent professional — a tear-gassed veteran of the original Tahrir Square protests that ousted autocrat…
American-Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy has been freed after being beaten, arrested and interrogated by security forces in Cairo. Eltahawy, 44, has reported that she was also sexually assaulted during her 12-hour detention. She is in Egypt covering the violent protests in Tahrir Square and its environs. Eltahawy is the first Egyptian journalist to have lived…
In a naked display of solidarity, 40 Israeli women recently took off their clothes to support an embattled young Egyptian woman who is under fire for posting a nude photograph of herself online. The Egyptian woman, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, 20, posted the picture and allowed it to be put on Twitter in order to protest…
There’s a new female heroine in the Arab world. A brave 25-year-old Egyptian marketing manager named Samira Ibrahim is suing the Egyptian military for the trauma she experienced during their so-called ‘virginity tests’ she suffered while being held in a military detainment center. Ibrahim was part of the group of 17 women arrested in Tahrir…
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